This may have been one of the contributing causes to the curious impulse which, about the autumn of the year '91, moved Nancy to think of rejoining her long-lost husband, and induced her to undertake a voyage to the West Indies with that laudable end in view. The journey was not a success. She, indeed, found Mr. Maclehose with little difficulty, but she found along with him the partner of his exile, a swarthy lady of those climes, with a numerous coffee-colored progeny. And this discovery so shocked the moral sensibilities of the little lady, who had regarded with a lenient eye the amorous delinquencies of her Sylvander, that she incontinently fled the marital premises, and returned to Leith in the same vessel that had brought her out. The most remarkable feature of this episode is the fact that Robert Burns, although at this time nearly three years married, did indubitably come to Edinburgh to seek a farewell interview with his Clarinda. How they two met, with what feelings, with what memories, who shall be bold enough to say? The world, at least, became infinitely the richer for this parting and for poor Clarinda's absence. For the poet's soul was stirred, and soon fine Edinburgh ladies at the harp and spinet, and country lasses at their milking, were singing, to its melting air,--
_'Now in her green mantle blythe Nature arrays,_ _And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes,_ _While birds warble welcome in ilka green show,_ _But to me it's delightless--my Nannie's awa'._
_The snaw-drap and primrose our woodlands adorn,_ _And violets bathe in the weet o' the morn;_ _They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blow,_ _They mind me o' Nannie--and Nannie's awa'._
_Thou lav'rock that springs frae the dews o' the lawn,_ _The shepherd to warn o' the grey-breaking dawn;_ _And thou mellow mavis that hails the night-fa'_ _Give over for pity--my Nannie's awa'.'_
And also of this curious farewell were born those lines in which is reached, perhaps, the very topmost summit of the lyrical genius of Burns--those lines which are the epitome of all love-tragedy--of all hopeless passion--of all parting woe. And these shall the painstaking reader, who toils to the end of this history, read on the last page for his reward.